1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to managing documents. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for managing document destruction.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, many businesses have an occasion to discard confidential data. This confidential data includes, for example, customer lists, price lists, sale statistics, drafts of bids, correspondence, business plans, and technical information. Examples of documents that are discarded on a regular basis are business records after the retention period for these documents has expired. This type of information may be of interest to competitors. Additionally, businesses also are entrusted with information that must be kept private and confidential.
Customers of businesses often expect that their information will be kept confidential and out of the hands of others. This confidential data often is in the form of documents submitted by customers or others. Additionally, these documents may be ones generated by the business during the ordinary course of business.
Without proper safeguards, these types of documents typically end up in a trash bin or dumpster where the documents are readily available to anybody who desires to look through these waste containers.
An acceptable method for discarding stored documents is to destroy them by a method that ensures that the information cannot be obtained by others. One popular method of destroying documents involves shredding documents. The documents are placed into a device or apparatus that cuts up or shreds the documents into tiny pieces such that the confidential or private information contained on those documents cannot be read.
Oftentimes, businesses keep records of the document destruction as a means to verify that documents have been destroyed. A business may destroy documents using its own employees and equipment, or oftentimes, a business will enlist a document destruction service to destroy the documents. These types of services often document the date that materials are destroyed with a certificate of destruction. In documenting the destruction of documents, these certificates are used to ensure that documents that should be destroyed through document retention policies are destroyed according to these policies. These certificates are used to avoid a negative inference that documents may have been destroyed for improper purposes.
Another issue is controlling or managing the destruction of documents. Safeguards against destroying valuable records or records needed for other purposes are hard to implement. With the large amounts of documents being destroyed on a daily basis, it is difficult to verify whether every document should or should not be destroyed.